Education for Holistic Transformation in Africa

By Faustin Ntamushobora and Victor Babajide Cole

Research has revealed ineffectiveness among university graduates in Africa. Some possible causes include a lack of transformative teaching and learning methods. Most of the learning methods used in Africa today were installed by colonial educational systems, often reducing the learner to an empty container waiting to be filled with lecture after lecture. As a result, there is a cry throughout Africa for an education that can empower the learner to think critically, to love both God and others, and to bring change in his or her community. This is what education for holistic transformation is all about.
This book came about as a result of a doctoral study conducted in Kenya, which featured both Christian higher educational institutions and public universities in a unique comparative analysis that will be helpful to educational leaders on both sides. Readers will learn that transformation is a discovery that takes place through change of perspective. As this research reveals, this new perspective is triggered by a new revelation, a new truth, a provoking thought, a shocking observation, or a new testimony. Thus, the process of holistic transformation takes place through divine revelation, self-reflection, written material, and "the other."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498200110

Faustin Ntamushobora

Faustin Ntamushobora (PhD, Biola University) is from Rwanda. He is President and CEO of Transformational Leadership in Africa and serves as Adjunct Professor at Biola University and International Leadership University, Nairobi, Kenya. He is the author of From Trials to Triumphs and several articles published in Evangelical Missions Quarterly and Common Ground Journal.

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Education for Holistic Transformation in Africa

Faustin Ntamushobora

Foreword by Victor Babajide Cole

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Education for Holistic Transformation in Africa

Copyright © 2015 Faustin Ntamushobora. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Preface

My interest in holistic transformation is tied to a long history in my life. In the 1980s I had an opportunity to coordinate fifty-two projects of Compassion International in Rwanda. Compassion International is a ministry that cares for the needs of a child in a holistic way. I was thrilled to see children and families transformed through a relationship of people from both sides of the ocean, and children growing in the love of God as their other needs were being met. By that time I did not understand much about transformation, but I could observe that Compassion International was different from other ministries that dichotomized the human being.

In 1986 I resigned from Compassion International and went to Shalom University in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo, to study theology. It was during my undergraduate studies that I was exposed to the dichotomizing of the evangelicals and to their Lausanne Confession, 1974. The Lausanne confession of 1974 text opened my eyes to education and discipleship in Africa and their failure, generally speaking, to impact change in community. It was also during my undergraduate training that I came across the expression the church in Africa is a mile long and an inch deep, although this is not just for Africa. When I went back to Rwanda after my first degree, it was evident to me that the church in Rwanda was growing in numbers but less in quality. It was because of this reason that in 1992, Gary Scheer, a missionary friend from World Venture (CB International then) and I founded the New Creation Ministries whose vision was to mentor small teams of leaders with in-depth biblical training and equipping them to disciple others. Two years later, Gary and I were proven to be right; within a hundred days, almost a million Rwandans were killed by fellow Rwandans, and most of the killers claimed to be Christians. Were the killers really Christians? A true Christian is a disciple of Christ; does a disciple kill or love? The genocide raised in me more questions about the need of the church in Africa to impact society.

As a result of these questions, when I went to Daystar University I wrote my master’s thesis on discipleship through relationships. I was wrestling with the issue of heart transformation and I was convinced that the church in Africa and especially in Rwanda was giving facts and information instead of making disciples of Jesus Christ. Discipleship is a relationship with self, God and others. I thought about how the African worldview centered on relationship offered opportunity for discipleship, but, unfortunately, this opportunity was not taken advantage of. I read again and again the call of Jesus for the disciples to be with him and to learn through a relationship with him and with one another, and I was puzzled that Jesus’ way was not the way discipleship was conducted in Africa. If you ask a hundred Christians in Rwanda whether they have gone through discipleship, they would say yes. If you ask them to explain how, I am pretty sure that 95 percent would tell you that they memorized the catechumen before their baptism, and that baptism marked the end of their discipleship. Is that what discipleship is all about?

In addition to spiritual transformation, my master’s degree program opened my eyes to the importance of integration and the failure for western education to acknowledge that Africans are holistic by nature, and that, for Africans, there is no separation of spiritual and social, but all is integrated to make life abundant. I even understood this better, when I took a course on Church and community development. That was the peak of my paradigm shift in my worldview about transformation. After my master’s degree I began reading books and articles with holistic transformation lenses but God wanted to equip me even more. In 2002 I joined African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministry (ALARM, Inc.), and for five years I ministered to leaders in East Africa using the holistic transformation development framework. In 2007 I went to the States where I did my doctoral studies in education at Biola University. My goal was to understand further what holistic transformation is, and how disciples of Christ can think critically, love the Lord and one another, and at the same time be change agents in their communities. At the end of my program, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on education for holistic transformation in Africa which I have transformed into this book. I am still learning how to form disciples who can bring holistic transformation on this continent of great potential, and I hope that my contribution will help the reader, especially Christian educators, to gain more understanding on holistic transformation and the method leading to it.

Amahoro—Shalom!

Foreword

This book, a purely exploratory exercise, is a timely contribution to the ongoing search for relevance in the formal education sector in Africa. For that reason the author devotes necessary space to the interface between education in traditional, colonial and post-colonial Africa in chapter 2. In any society, education serves specified purposes, not least the socialization of the young into a society’s ideals; that I term "the particular." The author presents salient characteristics of traditional African education that point to a deliberate effort to achieve holistic education. While traditional education served its purpose for a time, sometimes still longed for today, that era no longer exists! Change, inherent in the nature of education, is inevitable. However, disruption and disregard for wholesome traditional values in the wake of acculturation, adaptation and assimilation of Western forms of education are truly lamentable. In an increasingly globalized world, there is the need to balance the particular with the general, the local with the universal—a tension that the author briefly alludes to in chapter 1. When this tension goes unresolved, it sometimes makes some educationists in Africa to lament the state of schooling, or even the African psyche, as shown in what the author quotes as psychological ambivalence in chapter 2. The consequential negative turn of events in the educational systems well chronicled in chapter 1 may however not always be justifiably blamed on historical antecedents. Rather, the situation provides ongoing formidable challenge to African educationists, which challenge John Hanson (1965) long spoke of, at a time when the wave of independence was sweeping across Africa. Hanson had challenged African educationists to do a critical re-think of Western education by differentiating between what is hallucination and imagination in African education.

A niche of this volume is an attempt to promote holistic education, not just as information, but for transformation. To that end the author in chapter 3 explores leading theories for holistic transformation—graduating from Mezirow—perspective transformation (purely cognitive) to engaging multiple dimensions of being, as in Taylor and Brookfield (cognitive, affective, spiritual, intuitive and communal). But the non-Christian social scientist tends to bifurcate religiosity and spirituality. All these necessitated the author, in his quest for holism, to add in chapter 4, in a brilliant fashion, a theological perspective on holistic education. In the process, he acknowledges points of continuity between social science theories and biblical-theological perspective on education, but he also underscores the points of discontinuity. The author well underscores the critical and catalytic role of the relational, and in particular that of the community-of-learning—whether a faith community or a mentor-mentee relationship. The author’s introduction of a biblical distinctive in the transformation process, namely authenticity, is refreshing. While being categorical that it is the Holy Spirit who works transformation in individual learners, the teacher’s role in facilitating that work is nevertheless well articulated. I cannot agree more with the author.

Ntamushobora in chapter 5 reports findings of his field-work among selected Christians, who had completed post-graduate studies from public and private (Christian) universities in Kenya. He compares his field results with the characteristics of wholesome African traditional education outlined in chapter 1 and the salient points of social science theories on transformation discussed in chapter 3. The findings show that in the course of their graduate studies, these graduates had experienced transformation entirely in line with social science theories, with a singular point of departure, namely their acknowledgement of the role of the Holy Spirit in the transformation process. As they self-reflected on their days as students, they also resonated very well, in their experience, with most characteristics of traditional African education, except in one area—that their graduate studies failed to connect them with their cultural heritage. However, an equally explicit comparison of the field results with the cardinals of biblical-theological perspectives on transformation begs.

I highly commend this book to all who strive for greater relevance and holistic education as transformation, whether in Africa or beyond.

Victor Babajide Cole

Professor of Curriculum Development & Evaluation

Africa International University, Nairobi

1

The Need for Education for Holistic Transformation in Africa

Introduction

The position of the African continent in the world today marked by globalization requires that education in higher learning institutions, whether Christian or secular, be geared toward preparing graduates to face the challenges of the moment. Africa needs education that can face its multifaceted spiritual, social, economic and environmental problems. The African traditional education, though it was effective in propagating the cultural values of the African society, alone can no longer stand the challenges of globalization. Neither can the formal education introduced by colonizers, which was substandard compared to the European level,¹ and whose methods were based on transmission of information without critical thinking. Akilagpa states, The principal contribution of a university to society turns on the quality of the knowledge it generates and imparts, the habits of critical thought and problem-solving it institutionalizes and inculcates in its graduates, and the values of openness and democratic governance it promotes and demonstrates.² My assertion is that African universities will make an impact on society only if to Akilagpa’s three above constructs—quality of knowledge, habit of critical thinking, and value of openness—can be added the use of African pedagogical methods which were transformative in nature and which fit the African worldview.

An example of such method is depicted in the following scenario of a mother, here named Mukamana, mentoring her two daughters: Iradukunda, the young one, and Hagenimana, the older one:

Mukamana: Have you finished cleaning all the dishes?

Iradukunda: Yes, we finished quite a while back. There were not many dishes today. We have not had as many visitors as we did in the last two days.

Hagenimana: Mother, why do these people like coming to our home? I do not see them going to other homes as much as they come to ours!

Mukamana: Do not ask such questions. Don’t you know that visitors bring blessings and good fortune? Haven’t you ever heard that Urugo ni urugendwa (blessed is the home frequently visited)? When people come to visit us they also bring us news from the distant lands. You remember, for instance, when mother Kanyange was here, she told us that your aunt’s daughter of the seventh ridge got married to a rich man and they have a baby boy now!

Iradukunda: Mother, Hagenimana does not like washing dishes and that is why she is complaining about visitors.

Mukamana: What kind of woman will you make, Hagenimana? Don’t you know the proverb that says, Urugo rwiza rwakira abashyitsi (a good home provides for the hungry)? A woman who is growing up almost ready to be married should not hate visitors nor refuse to offer them food. This is not good for a respectable wife.

Hagenimana: Mother, I have heard and I will not repeat it again.

Mukamana: Yes, if you hate visitors, your home will be like a deep river. But if you welcome visitors, good will shall always be with you. You will get people to tell you about distant lands and events coming up in the community. You will also get someone to scratch your back. My daughters, I would like you to be hardworking so that you will get good men to marry you. No one wants to marry a lazy girl. You go to bed now so that you will rise early to fetch water before going to the farm.³

This is an informal pedagogical method that the mother uses to inculcate knowledge, wisdom, values and tradition in her two daughters that she is preparing for life in the family and community at large. African traditional pedagogical methods were relevant and practical.

Illustrating the relevance of non-formal education in Africa, Gillespie and Melching conducted research in a non-government organization called Tostan (meaning breakthrough in Wolof) situated in Senegal.⁴ The word Tostan in Wolof describes the sharing and spreading of knowledge by people themselves in their own language and using their own cultural traditions.⁵ The curriculum of this organization was learner-centered and culture-based. The curriculum effectively integrated traditional West African proverbs, songs, stories, plays and dances into its pedagogical approach, and learners were involved in the development and implementation of the curriculum. The curriculum was designed for adults and aimed at empowering learners and transforming their communities. The team that developed the curriculum integrated interactive facilitation practices into its pedagogy and drew from experiences of learners to create a curriculum offered in local languages that included problem-solving, health, literacy, and management.⁶

This curriculum opened the possibility for women to articulate their health concerns in village meetings and to the press. Participants responded to the modules of the curriculum in an unexpected way: they linked their new knowledge to community organization and social action. As a result, they reached out to others in their community and they collectively abandoned the centuries-old practice of female genital cutting (FGC). Other women organized peaceful marches against violence against women and children and/or forced marriage.

This is an example of transformation achieved through a non-formal educational system. Formal education inherited from Europe may not reach such an important audience of the society. Yet, in Africa, it is said that when a woman is educated, the whole community is educated. Women are generally the ones who inculcate social and moral values in young children. They are also the ones who, generally speaking, deal with farming, raising cattle and doing small business to support the family. Furthermore, research in developing countries indicates that a mother’s education, especially at the secondary level and above, is more important than a father’s education for increasing school enrollment and daughters’ higher education because educated mothers have the bargaining power to direct household resources into their children’s, especially their daughters,’ educations.⁷ Yet, European education may not even be equipped pedagogically to produce transformation that non-formal African education produced in the lives of the learners and their communities.

As Orr puts it, we (Africans) must not assume that it is education that will save us, or advance us or progress us; rather it is education of a certain kind.⁸ Olukoshi and Zeleza suggest that in this twenty-first century Africa needs universities that

are anchored on the evolution of a knowledge society that it at once rooted in the African context, responding to the needs of the local environment whilst simultaneously engaging with the rest of the world in line with the ideal of the university as an international center for the advancement of science and scholarship.⁹

As I have explained elsewhere, philosophically, Africa needs an education with roots in African values and worldview.¹⁰ Psychologically, this education should touch the cognitive life of the learner as well as his or her affective and volitional life. It should equip the learner with knowledge, transform his or her emotions, prepare the person to make the right decisions and equip one with skills to transform his or her society. Methodologically, this education should be geared toward critical and creative